In My Home Town and Coming To You Soon. Surveillance 24/7

originally posted by: semperfortis
"
"That's a busy place and it's just an extra set of eyes that you can have to make sure that should something go wrong, you got a record of it and hopefully track what happened," Kruea explained.
"

Yeah right. It's only when corporate property is involved that they might help.

If it's just a crime against you they don't even want to take a statement. Access to see any footage is painfully slow - they can access it instantly if they want to, but to use as evidence for your case they don't wanna hear it and will say "those cameras are dummy cameras", "that one doesn't work".

a reply to: semperfortis

When you sacrifice liberty for safety. . . .

I understand your point, and in many respects your comparison with public eyes, actual people just looking at you - not cameras, watching you out and about and CCTV cameras and microphones recording your movements digitally seems like a similar thing, but it isn't at all.

The difference when put into perspective would be to take your scenario of ordinary people going about their business on a busy city street, where many other people would see you and glance over at you, or otherwise look at you and perhaps 'mentally record' you during your day, and then compare that to the equivalent of CCTV, where an official from the civil service or government / police force, is assigned to following you around, watching every move and making notes of what you looked at, who you communicated with, what was said, the body language you employed while talking to people, what you ate and drank, what you bought in shops and on and on.

In other words there's a big difference with members of the public casually seeing or innocently looking at you on a public street, compared with some faceless agent in the service of the government deliberately following you around and recording everything you do and say hundreds of time per day.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: semperfortis

I believe that if we are so paranoid that our Police feel they have to pull a Big Brother and spy on everything we do, we are not much of a country anymore.

I worry more and more about where this is headed in the future. It's just chip, chip, chip away at our privacy until there will be none soon. It's out of control.

It also concerns me how so many can't seem to see where this is all headed.

I suppose the REAL acid test for people who say they are neutral or support CCTV cameras and the government continually watching their daily movements with them, would be to ask the question;

How would you feel, if there were no CCTV cameras anywhere, but instead the government brought in a law where it is compulsory for every Man, Woman, Child and infant to have a chip implanted somewhere inside their bodies, that did the same thing as the CCTV cameras do and much more...it would record medical information, your mental state, your emotional state and what you are eating, drinking (and smoking etc.).

It would record what you get up to in private meetings, what you did at work, even how many times you used the toilet...we could argue that these hypothetical chips, in addition to tracking movements and position, and recording literally everything you're saying and doing, will also benefit us by sending an alert in case of medical emergency, like a heart attack or serious injury...would that benefit make such an all pervading intrusion into our public and private lives, the permanent observation by faceless people working for TPTB, of every aspect of our lives and of our bodies, justify the implantation of the spying technology and be worth the trade off?

And as technology gets better and more advanced, these chips may one day have the ability to actually speak directly to you from within you...how does a disembodied voice, barking orders at you, from inside your own head sound?!

And further down the line, when these implants get even more advanced to the point where they can alter your body chemistry..where they can trigger chemicals that can make you happy, angry, sad, aroused, passive...obedient. What about when they could make you actually think in the way they want?

Well, this isn't here...yet.

But it's a slippery slope we're on i think, and this kind of thing is probably nearer than most of us would like to know.

I think we need to make rules that they can only be used to solve major crimes. They should be noticeable or there should be signs alerting that they exist. That could make vulnerable folks feel safer and it would alert predators that they will be Identified and prosecuted more easily if they commit an illegal act in that area.

I'm against using them as revenue collection tools as that's where the abuse begins.

They are already abused where signal timings are purposely altered as money making schemes - where half the revenue are going to private entities. I can envision a day when everyone must have an electronic identifier on their person and revenue sharks could watch for minor acts such as jaywalking, smoking etc. and then use the id database to alert you of the infractions you must pay for each month.

I don't really understand the comments about needing camera's for parking problems, seems a little extreme. I don't see parking problems as a crime. I've had my driveway blocked during large events and yes I get pissed when I need to get out and I'm blocked. I use to just take out my old beater truck and scrape my way out - never heard a word from them. I only called the parking police once when they abandon non-working cars for months.

i'm like this if your not in a area that you have a expectation of privacy, ie your home, a hotel room, or in a place of business that has made accommodations for privacy, you shouldn't expect it. you should be aware that at any time your actions could be or are being monitored.

that said there are countless cases were a crime has been committed and the person was caught because of live surveillance or video. that's a good thing, but as some have said it can also lead to abuse.

lets say joe blow dispatcher sitting in a dark monitor room decides he doesn't like the way you look, and that the way your looking at that bank, car, women, kid, or any other countless things out there is suspicious, then rolls units to your location. you could wind up in deep doo,doo.

We already have cameras at main street intersections.....allegedly to control traffic patterns ...at least the one you're talking about are honest about why they are there.

I have mixed feelings....and pretty much feel if you are outdoors what you are doing can be seen by LEOs anyway.

I'd rather have these than the ones my neighbor has on his house....for whatever dubious reasons....I do expect privacy in MY back yard

originally posted by: semperfortis
a reply to: Snarl

I'm kind of the same.. I could care less if they mounted a camera on my head.. They would just get bored watching the vid feed.. LMAO

But I can not ignore they "Big Brother" aspect either..

(And yes.. I am familiar with the parking.. AND DRIVING.. issues where you live.. SCARY )

For me it's the laws we all break on a daily basis without even knowing it, and add in cameras everywhere watching your every move. Add in random power tripping and boredom and authority and it's a combination that can end up landing lots of people in trouble. At least thats my impression on it. Personally I can see the positives in ending some crimes but at what cost?..

a reply to: semperfortis

I think we all know, Semp, someone will abuse or take advantage of this sort of surveillance system.

Glad to see that you, as a LE pro, recognize that and are willing to question it's legitimacy.

a reply to: MysterX

And as technology gets better and more advanced, these chips may one day have the ability to actually speak directly to you from within you...how does a disembodied voice, barking orders at you, from inside your own head sound?!

This reminds me of an incident that happened on the underground train at DIA. We were the first to approach the the loading area. A woman's voice came on an overhead speaker she was droning on about loading instructions/airport info etc. It was obviously recorded.

The train arrived we boarded/settled in. Right before the doors closed a man jumped on with his bag. There wasn't much room so he stayed by the door.

The tone of the woman's voice suddenly changed. She very curtly told the man he was too close to the door, move away. He wasn't paying attention/stayed put. That's when her tone got nastier. She said something to the effect that he was holding everyone up/needed to move his ass, more or less.

We were all looking at him, that's when he realized she was talking to him, he moved away from the door. I could tell it surprised him. I don't remember if she thanked him, I don't think so but the doors closed, we left. I wanted to give him the "Nelson" laugh because the recorded lady yelled at him.

DIA is creepy anyway but "1984" instantly came to mind. It really would've freaked me out if she had used his name.

I don't think people are reading books like "1984," 'The Jungle," "Brave New World" or "Animal Farm" etc. At one time they were required reading. I found so much strength in those characters. Even books like "The Good Earth" aren't being read. I love that book, "never sell the land" are words to live by.

People are forgetting our history/warnings from the past. They think that's old school nothing like that could ever happen...until it does.

a reply to: MysterX

When I look at how it has changed during my lifetime, I can't help but be suspicious of the motives.

What I see is people becoming accustomed to one thing which then sets them up for the next, all under the guise of safety and security.

I still remember being educated on the horrors of living in the Soviet Union, where you could not even drive from one place to another without being asked for papers, which among other things was used as a means of complete control. Now to fly as a citizen of the US, from one place inside the US to another inside the US, we have to submit to aggressive searches at their whim. I think it's all very much related.

If we complain, well then we must have something to hide. I suspect that was the same logic used to rationalize the lack of freedom in the former Soviet Union as well. What was once considered unacceptable to the sensibilities of citizens of a free democratic nation, are now imposed on us to keep us safe!!! I can't buy into that. It's all about control.

Behind it in my opinion is a fear of us (citizens) by them (authorities).

Although camera's in public areas monitoring what we do may seem innocuous and well intentioned, it will be used to condition us for the next intrusion.

I look at how easily so many are accepting these steps towards a very scarey future and it gives me little hope for what it will be like a couple of decades down the road.

a reply to: Morningglory

Those were required reading in the schools where I grew up. I remember lengthy discussions about them in fact and as early as Junior High School. It's certainly a different world now and the schools seem to no longer teach children how to think, but instead what to think.

originally posted by: MysterX
Basically, the cameras we have here in the UK are like a caricature of an over the top, Orwellian joke. They're everywhere.

Let's stop you right there, as you have fallen into the trap of believing that old report into CCTV from about 10 years ago - 2003 to be exact - the same report which has been discredited for it's flawed methods and even discredited by it's own authors!

95% of all CCTV in the UK is privately owned - you know the sort, in shops, petrol stations etc. It has bog all to do with the Police or some "Orwellian State"...

originally posted by: MysterX
It's estimated that in the UK, if we leave our homes, we get recorded an average of 300 - 400 times a day.

This is how I know you're quoting from that (discredited) report, because they quoted this exact figure. Do you know the method they used to come to this number? They went to a small Borough in London, had a look at how many CCTV camera's were on a stretch of road 1.5Km long, then extrapolated that out to the entire country!

The report was authored by two chaps called Clive Norris & Mike McCahill - The report can be found here and here you can find it nicely debunked

The reality is that the McCahill and Norris figure (4,285,000 to be precise) as based on counting the number of cameras along approximately 1.5 kilometres of road in a busy commercial/shopping district. They chose part of Upper Richmond Road and the entire length of Putney High Street in the London Borough of Wandsworth. They started by counted the number of publicly accessible premises and established the average number of cameras per location, then added the number of open-street CCTV cameras operated by the Borough Council together with an estimate of those operating in public institutions such as transport, hospitals and schools. This figure was then extrapolated across the whole of London (population 7.2 million residents). They estimated that there were at least 500,000 CCTV cameras in London, or one camera for every 14 residents. Extrapolating this figure across the UK (population of 60 million) gave them the 4.285 million – the number that is quoted by so many to this day.

What of the 300-a-day figure? Well, we tested that as well. Instead of using a mythical character who undertook a journey to all the local CCTV hotspots, we used real people undertaking real journeys. Using the mapping information and their own observations, we listed all the ANPR, traffic light, and speed cameras that they passed, together with those business premises cameras that may have captured a fleeting glance of their vehicle as it passed by. We added the local authority cameras plus those in the various shops and leisure centres that they visited as they went about their normal activities. Finally, we added those cameras at their workplace. The figures ranged from 42 cameras to 101 with the mean average of 68. This is a far cry from the 300 a day that the media regularly use.